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Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Findmypast.co.uk to digitise British Library's UK electoral register and India Office record collections

The following is from FindMyPast.

British Library andfindmypast.co.ukto digitise 5 million pages of family history records - Selections from the India Office Records and a century of electoral registers will be made available onlineThe British Library and family history websitefindmypast.co.ukare to digitise a treasure trove of family history resources held by the Library, making them available online and fully searchable for the first time.The project will involve the scanning of UK electoral registers covering the century that followed the Reform Act of 1832, along with records of baptisms, marriages and burials drawn from the archives of the India Office. When available online, these collections will enable historians, genealogists and family history researchers to make connections and track down details of ancestors and others at the click of a mouse - work that would previously have necessitated visits to the Library's Reading Rooms and many hours of laborious manual searching.The British Library holds the national collection of electoral registers covering the whole of the United Kingdom. The registers contain a vast range of names, addresses and other genealogical information.

"Digitisation of the electoral registers will transform the work of people wishing to use them for family history research," said Jennie Grimshaw, the Library's curator for Social Policy and Official Publications. "Printed electoral registers are arranged by polling district within constituency and names are not indexed, so the process of finding an address to confirm names of residents is currently incredibly laborious. Digitisation represents a huge breakthrough as users will be able to search for names and addresses, thereby pinpointing the individuals and ancestors they're looking for."

The other holdings included in the large-scale digitisation are drawn from the archives of the East India Company and the India Office. These records relate to Britons living and working in the Indian sub-continent during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, up to Independence in 1948. They include over 1,000 volumes of ecclesiastical returns of births, marriages and burials, together with applications for civil and military service, and details of pension payments to individuals.Antonia Moon, curator of post-1858 India Office Records said, "These records are an outstanding resource for researchers whose ancestors had connections with British India, whether as servants of the administration or as private inhabitants."

The partnership between the British Library andfindmypast.co.ukfollowed a competitive tender process and will see five million pages of UK electoral registers and India Office records digitised over the next year. The resources will become available viafindmypast.co.ukand in the British Library's Reading Rooms from early 2012; online access will be available tofindmypast.co.uksubscribers and pay-as-you-go customers - access to users in the British Library Reading Rooms will be free.Simon Bell, the British Library's Head of Licensing and Product Development, said: "We are delighted to announce this exciting new partnership between the British Library andfindmypast.co.uk, which will deliver an online and fully searchable resource that will prove immensely valuable to family history researchers in unlocking a treasure trove of content that up to now has only been available either on microfilm or within the pages of bound volumes. The Library will receive copies of the digitised images created for this project, so as well as transforming access for current researchers, we will also retain digital versions of these collections in perpetuity, for the benefit of future researchers."Elaine Collins, Commercial Director atfindmypast.co.uk, said: "We're very excited to be involved with this fascinating project. The electoral rolls are the great missing link for family historians: after censuses and civil registration indexes, they provide the widest coverage of the whole population. To have Irish and Scottish records alongside England and Wales is also a huge advantage. These records will join the 1911 Census, Chelsea Pensioner Service Records and many more datasets available online atfindmypast.co.uk, which enable people to make fantastic discoveries day after day."About The British LibraryThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The British Library's collections include 150 million items from every era of written human history beginning with Chinese oracle bones dating from 300 BC, right up to the latest e-journals.www.bl.ukAboutfindmypast.co.ukLeading UK family history websitefindmypast.co.uk(formerly1837online.com) was the first company to make the complete birth, marriage and death indexes for England & Wales available online in April 2003.Following the transcription, scanning and indexing of over two million images, the company launched the first website to allow the public easy and fast access to the complete indexes, which until then had only been available on microfiche film in specialist archives and libraries. The launch was instrumental in creating the widespread and growing interest in genealogy seen in the UK today.Findmypast.co.ukhas subsequently digitised many more family history records and now offers access to over 750 million records dating as far back as 1538. This allows family historians and novice genealogists to search for their ancestors among comprehensive collections of military records, census, migration, occupation directories, and current electoral roll data, as well as the original comprehensive birth, marriage and death records.In November 2006findmypast.co.uklaunched theancestorsonboard.commicrosite in association with The National Archives to publish outbound passenger lists for long-distance voyages departing all British ports between 1890 and 1960.

As well as providing access to historical records,findmypast.co.ukis also developing a range of online tools to help people discover and share their family history more easily, beginning with the launch of Family Tree Explorer in July 2007.

In April 2007,findmypast.co.uk's then parent company Title Research Group received the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation 2007 in recognition of their achievement.Findmypast.co.ukwas acquired in December 2007 by brightsolid, the company that was awarded The National Archives' contract to publish online the 1911 census, which it launched in January 2009.